Countering

Transnational Criminal Markets
quite widespread criticism for relying ‘too heavily on Participants policing themselves’
(Malamut 2005: 47) – a criticism which will be equally familiar to critics of a trade selfregulation
approach to illicit antiquities (Gerstenblith 2007).
The strength of the KP lies in the honesty or incorruptibility of traders in the chain:
so the system cannot
promise, with complete confidence, that no government inspector at the mining site was bribed
to deny that guerilla forces controlled the mines, that no customs official was bribed to issue a
certificate that the package of stones was conflict-free, and that no diamond merchant on 47 th St.
in Manhattan slipped a gem into the package bought cheap from someone who had smuggled it in
under his tongue (Feldman 2003).
In many source countries, unlicensed ‘artisanal’ miners operate alongside licensed miners
and dealers, and are allowed to do so by local government inspectors who may impose
their own conditions on turning a blind eye. Licensed miners can purchase diamonds
from unlicensed miners, so laundering them into the system at source (Malamut 2005;
Kaplan 2003).
The flaws in the system are perceived to be so severe that Global Witness, the NGO
that spearheaded the campaigning that led to the establishment of the KP in 2003, ‘left’
the KP in December 2011. It resigned its position at the helm of the Kimberley Process
Civil Society Coalition, disappointed at the lack of enforcement action by governments
and the absence of independent verification of the industry’s self-regulation approach
to the provision of supply chain warranties. Charmain Gooch, co-founder of Global
Witness and the leader of its KP related campaigning, has said the lack of serious control
exercised by participants in the KP ‘has turned an international conflict prevention
mechanism into a cynical corporate accreditation scheme’ (Gooch 2011). It ‘has done
much that is useful but ultimately has failed to deliver[...]; it has proved beyond doubt
that voluntary schemes are not going to cut it[…]’ (Gooch 2011); ‘it has become an
accomplice to diamond laundering – whereby dirty diamonds are mixed in with clean
gems’ (Global Witness 2011). The NGO has, along with others, expressed dismay at the
KP’s failure adequately to sanction Zimbabwe in respect of widespread human rights
abuses at mines in the Marange region (Human Rights Watch 2009). Being a case of
violence, corruption and abuse by the police and the military of the Mugabe regime, the
problem the KP has with state abuses was highlighted: these are not ‘conflict diamonds’
fuelling a rebel war, although they may be brought within the definition due to the
obvious problems with supply chain integrity. Generally, however, human rights abuses
at the hands of government forces are not relevant concerns for the KP with its emphasis
on conflict diamonds.
Similar to the antiquities trade, diamond dealers have never been especially eager to
reveal the source of their stock’ since ‘the traditions of the industry include secrecy and
mystery’ (Feldman 2003). Diamond dealers use bourses in major diamond trading cities
as venues in which to perform their middleman role in the industry, and those bourses
are capable of expelling dealers who are considered untrustworthy, effectively barring
them from further participation in the world trade. Antiquities dealers have associations
too, but these do not exercise the same level of control over trading possibilities: many
dealers are not association members, and expulsion from an association does not carry
the same ‘excommunication’ meaning as where ‘it ends one’s ability to operate as a
significant player in the diamond industry’ (Feldman 2003). The penalties of the industry
self-regulatory approach in the KP do not therefore look like they would transfer across
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